UNIT 1: GRAMMAR

by Karina Palacios octubre 25, 2020 0 comentarios

 

Unit 1: GRAMMAR

What is grammar?

        The TKT book (Spratt, M., Pulverness, A., &Williams, M. 2011) describes grammar as the way that people combine parts of words, words, sets of words, so they have meaning.  Also, it refers to the rules of any language that lead its forms and uses. Grammar is an unconscious process that human beings do when they want to communicate with each other in an oral or written way. When listening and reading, we use this process too. So, the message is understood.

We understood what grammar is. Now, it is time to introduce the term grammatical form. Aarts, B. (2017) defines grammatical forms as category labels used to build blogs of languages which, are presented in a speech or writing. There are some examples to explain that definition, such as the form of some adverbs (part of speech) made up by adding -ly (suffix) at the end of an adjective: Happy= happily (affixation). Another example of the form of the present simple (a grammatical structure) is Subject + verb + complement +.

In the example happy+ -ly= happily, we can see that the word changes its meaning by adding a set of letters at the end. That process is affixation. There are two classes of affixes: suffixes (a group of letters added at the end of a base word) and prefixes (a group of letters added at before of the root of a word). According to Manova S. (2014), affixation allows word classes to change their functions and meanings. In the last example, we found that the adjective “happy” changed into the adverb happily by adding a suffix.

 So, it means that we can find grammatical forms in parts of speech or word classes. The meaning of part of speech, according to O’Brien E. (2019), is the way that words behave in a sentence. There are nine parts of speech or word classes divided into two categories: structural words and grammatical words. First, structural words are nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. On the other hand, grammatical words are pronouns, conjunctions, determiners, prepositions. Exclamations are the last part of speech, but they do not fall in any category.

Grammatical structures are part of grammatical forms, as we found in the last example: Structure: Present Simple; Form: Subject + verb + complement +. 

At this moment, we can describe the meaning of grammatical uses. Ovillang, J. (2019) says that when grammatical structures combine with each of them in a speech or writing piece, they make sense to the listener or reader. That meaning depends on the context and the receptor’s knowledge of the world. So, sometimes words are less polite than others depending of the culture. 

To sum up this information, it is important to ask ourselves what did we learn in this unit?

We learned some key terms refer to grammar. First, we understood the meaning of grammar. Most of the time, people talk about grammar, but they do not about that it is the way of combining words, set of words, and parts of words. Also, we discover that grammar does not refer only to grammar structures. But, it is about other grammatical forms such as affixation and parts of speech. We learned the differences between lexical set and word family. Now we can join in in a better way.

Also, as teachers, we should take into consideration some points to improve our oral lesson so, there are some suggestion we can apply like:

Ø  Techers must teach grammar in context. For example, if teachers just say that present progressive is formed with a noun; the verb to be; another verb in gerund; and the complement, students will get lose.

Ø  Teachers should provide students with activities focused on form and use of grammar, so they will know how to use the language in any situation. For example, if they know when the present perfect is used, they will not use present simple ever.

 

Bibliography:

Aarts, B. (2017, March 29). Grammatical form. Retrieved October 23, 2020, from https://grammarianism.wordpress.com/tag/grammatical-form/

Manova, Stela. (2014). Affixation (Oxford Bibliographies in Linguistics, version 2014). 10.1093/OBO/9780199772810-0183.

O’Brien, E. (2019). English Parts of Speech. Retrieved October 23, 2020, from

Ovillang, J. (2019). Grammar. Retrieved October 23, 2020, from

Spratt, M., Pulverness, A., &Williams, M. (2011). The TKT Course Modules 1,2 and 3 (Second) Cambridge: Cambridge Univertity Press. https://doig,org/10.1017/CBO9781139062398.003